Turkey's Loyal Opposition
On 30 March 2023, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu attended an İstanbul Platformu iftar in Istanbul. After the iftar, he posed for photographs . In one of them, he was seen standing with his shoes on a prayer rug. When the image became public, it caused a major controversy.
The pro-government side framed the photograph as proof of the CHP’s lack of respect for religious values, using it to revive an older charge: that the CHP was culturally alien to pious conservatives.
The CHP described the incident as an accidental, unfortunate mistake in a crowded post-iftar setting. Kılıçdaroğlu apologized quickly. But the political damage to his campaign had already been done, with Turkey only weeks away from a presidential election in which he would face Erdoğan.
I do not recall this incident because it explains why Kılıçdaroğlu lost the election. It does not. I recall it because the photograph resurfaced, now as evidence of a much darker claim: that Kılıçdaroğlu had knowingly stepped on the prayer rug in order to lose the election.
The question that drives all this speculative thinking is, in fact, the right one: why does Erdoğan want Kılıçdaroğlu back at the head of the CHP?
The simple thinking suggests, Erdoğan must benefit from it. If Kılıçdaroğlu appeared unwilling to play along, the thinking would not go far. But he did not. And that is what gives the thinking its force. Perhaps Kılıçdaroğlu was not merely useful to Erdoğan in the present crisis. Perhaps he had been useful to him all along.
Once this thinking begins to interpret the past, older episodes are recovered, rearranged, and made to fit the new story. Kılıçdaroğlu’s earlier distance from Bülent Ecevit’s circle is remembered differently. His rise to the CHP leadership after Deniz Baykal’s forced resignation in 2010 is reexamined. His repeated electoral choices are reread not as failed strategy, but as evidence of a deeper political function.
Why does this matter?
For years, Kılıçdaroğlu was accused by parts of the Turkish opposition of being too passive, too cautious, too conciliatory, too attached to procedure. He lost elections. He kept the opposition docile. He avoided open confrontation. At times, he even went along with Erdoğan on critical issues.
Those criticisms long predated 2023. But after the recent CHP crisis, they acquired a sharper meaning. The suspicion is no longer simply that Kılıçdaroğlu failed against Erdoğan. It is that Erdoğan had built his kind of opposition, and now, when that opposition seemed to be disappearing, he intervened to protect it.
Whether this newly acquired awareness among opposition voters will prove fatal for Erdoğan remains to be seen. But it may not serve him well. The CHP is useful as a loyal opposition only so long as those who vote for the party do not know it.